


i've been loving you for quite some time

by evelynwoe



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, F/M, Future Fic, Gen, Marriage Proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-07
Updated: 2014-10-07
Packaged: 2018-02-20 07:43:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2420639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evelynwoe/pseuds/evelynwoe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jake and Amy have been dating for a year when Jake gets the call that the Pontiac Bandit's back in town, and teams up with Rosa to finish what he started once and for all. Meanwhile, Amy gets offered a captaincy, and Gina and Charles go full Boyle. Also, there's a proposal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i've been loving you for quite some time

”Ladies and Gentlemen, you have in your hands the greatest discovery since that one time I walked in on Amy holding an imaginary conversation with the Captain in the mirror, which for the record, I will never forget. But this my friends, might be better. I present you with… drumroll please….The bucket list of the one and only Charles Boyle!” Jake’s holding a teetering pile of papers in his hands, and has affected a circus master voice for his speech. Soon enough, everyone’s gotten their hands on a stack of stapled photocopies, and they’re scanning through them. 

"First of all, I’d like to make sure everybody knows that this list is a work in progress. Goals change, for example I’ve crossed out 'make Rosa fall in love with me' and replaced it with "make Vivian fall in love with me", and replaced THAT with 'get over Vivian', although you can’t really tell because of the tears, and replaced THAT with-"

"NUMBER 69: Get the cool new guy at the precinct to be my best friend." Gina’s voice rings out over Boyle’s ramble, but rather then exacting the bemused consternation she was expecting, all her announcement achieves is a supremely satisfied Jake and an enthusiastic series of high-fives.   
  
With this, Charles takes out what she presumes is the original list, and crosses out item 516: Get a high five from Jake every day for a year.  
  
"Seriously? We’ve high fived every day this year?"   
  
"Oh yeah. I’ve been keeping a tally."  
  
"Aw sweet, man."  
  
This continues for some time, and very quickly devolves into the officers participating in a contest in which they try to out-do themselves with items from the list, the finalists of this being: #78- buy a jacket with the perfect ratio of fringe to spandex, #430- eat the testicles of an angler fish, stuffed with foie gras and goat curry (this discovery leads to a momentary pause in the game for the hurried runs to the bathroom that it brings about,) and Amy’s find, which is the eventual winner: #370- be one of those girls in Jake’s car.   
  
There is a small mutiny over Amy’s victory being the product of an unfair judge, and for a moment Jake sees himself having to face down Rosa in defence of his girlfriend. The moment passes blessedly quickly; she breaks into a smile when she looks at it written on the white board and admits that it is the fair winner, and Jake’s sigh of relief is so loud he wonders whether they can hear it over at the 82.   
  
"I do hope that this frivolity is conducive to a good working environment, although somehow I fail to see how a document entitled ‘The Secret Diary of a Cop Boy’ and subtitled ‘1000 things to do before I die’ is related to efficient police work. By all means, prove me wrong."  
  
"Captain! We were just… we were… no I can’t save this, I’m sorry, sir, we’ll get right back to work."  
  
"Thank you Sergeant. Peralta, the price of photocopies is deducted from your salary at the end of the month. I certainly hope you accounted for that, officer."

* * *

For the eight years between 2005 and 2013, the Pontiac Bandit stole and resold a couple hundred cars, all of them pontiacs, and became the head of a successful crime operation."

"Jake, we know the pontiac bandit story. Why are you bringing him back?" Rosa has raised an eyebrow during the briefing, and there it still is. Jake has an uncomfortable feeling that "Bandit-Gate 2014" has not been forgotten or forgiven. His biceps twinge sympathetically at the thought of doing 2,000 pushups ever again.  
  
"Great question, and one I will answer presently. Three weeks ago I was doing my usual Tuesday routine; I’m sure you all know I like to keep the street as crime free as possible."  
  
"We know that you forgot to make a reservation for date night and went to ask that mafia restaurant owner guy to give you a table for two. But keep talking."  
  
"Yes. Well. I found myself approached by Isaac, this kid who deals on the Brooklyn bridge, and he dropped some intel that has led me to believe" Here, he takes out a pointer from his pocket and jabs it dramatically at the picture of Doug Judy he has pinned above the whiteboard in the briefing room, always hitting the precinct with a smug smile, "that the Pontiac bandit is back in town." Rosa looks at him, her gaze as inscrutable as Holt’s in that second, and Jake has to resist the temptation to bow. "I understand that that’s like, the worst evidence ever and I wasn’t going to do anything until I got this in the mail-" at this, he picks up a piece of paper and holds it up. Written in glitter pen on what looks to be a rudimentary cartoon of a mouse, it says: "Guess who’s back, Feivel ."  
  
"You sure you wanna go after him? He left us chasing after a hairdresser in a warehouse last time, we looked like morons. I had to burn half of my sheets to get rid of the shame." Rosa crosses her arms and fixes Jake with a  look that screams both ‘I will break every bone in your body if you mess up again’, and ‘I trust you if you think this is the right call.’    
  
"It’s the right call. 1000 push-ups. I have been living for two years with the pain of Doug Judy’s betrayal. NO MORE, SAY I. I have a very particular set of skills which will make me a nightmare for someone like him. I will look for him. I will find him. And then I will put him in prison for a relatively long sentence!- Quick pause, can we count Taken as a cop movie? There’s a crime, right?"  
  
"Enough. Let’s catch this dumbass." She drags him out of the briefing room by the forearm, grip so hard he lets out an involuntary stream of ohgodohgodwhynostops. It is not his finest hour. 

* * *

"First of all, the fact that you ‘n Jakey are ‘doing the nasty’ disgusts me personally, and secondly I hope you realise that that lil weeny? I saw it before  _anyone_  did. And the Captain wants to see you.” Amy’s sitting at her desk, hunched over the paperwork for her latest collar, but Gina’s insistent poking at her shoulder blade from her desk with a contraption made of three reacher-grabbers and a line of highlighters makes her look up. Admittedly it’s not an immediate reaction, but rather her frustratedly giving in after about ten minutes of being prodded, but who's checking. 

"Gina you’ve been starting everything you tell me with that for over a year now, hasn’t it gotten kind of old? Yesterday you told me that you were the bar Jake would always measure women against before telling me that I was being put in charge of a homicide case."   
  
"Yeah well, I don’t make the rules." Gina’s already back at looking at her phone, and Amy, after a moment (a  _moment)_ spent looking into a compact and checking that her ponytail has the appropriate amount of bounce, walks into the Captain’s office.  
  
"You wanted to see me, sir?" He’s sitting at his desk, but as she comes in he gets up and walks towards his office window, which looks out at the precinct. She follows, because she hasn’t quite gotten out of the habit of placating him, but things are better now then they were two years ago. Jake’s been a terrible influence on her when it comes to Holt; she questions every 50th suggestion he makes now.   
  
"I understand that you and Detective Peralta have been romantically involved for some time now."   
  
"Yes… you came to our one year anniversary party last week."  
  
"Indeed. It was a beautiful evening, Detective Boyle gave a very moving speech. I was very emotional." Amy doesn’t quite contain the look of disbelief and triumph that threatens to take over her face, but she does make a note to tell Jake that what he’d thought was Holt being disgusted by his cooking was in fact, as she had attested, Holt  _feeling._    
  
"I bring it up only because I do maintain a policy that married police officers shouldn’t work in the same precinct, particularly as you are his senior officer. The commissioner could very well accuse you of favourable treatment, and marriage would take away the chance of any deniability."  
"Well Jake and I…I mean…Well…"  
  
"Captain Jeffords was recently approached with the possibility of a transfer  at the 78th precinct. He declined, since apparently his current precinct is close enough for him to take his ‘baby girls’ to school before work, a bonding experience which he cherishes.  I recommended he put you up for the placement. They want you to go in for interview tomorrow, I instructed Terry to brief you on the questions you can expect."  
  
"Oh well, I’ve already memorised the questions from every interview for a Captain post since 1983, but I’m sure it’ll be very helpful. Thank you so much, but Jake and I…we’re not thinking of getting married."  
  
"I’m so sorry. I assumed, since the anniversary was such a beautiful event that you were considering it. Kevin and I got engaged on our first year anniversary as well, although circumstance made it so we could not get married. Kevin at first didn’t believe my proposal to be genuine- I was quite a joker then. Not unlike Detective Peralta."  
  
"Oh…oh god." Suddenly a series of moments flash through Amy’s mind, and her eyes widen so far and so fast that her face hurts for a moment. Still, there’s Jake in her mind, going " _Amy Santiago, please marry me”_ when she came into work the night before ComStat numbers were due, while he was hunkered over the incredible pile of paperwork he’d let build throughout the month, bearing take-out and a four colour pen. Or “ _I want to spend the rest of my life with you”_ when he’d pretended to propose during an assignment that involved blending in at one of those insufferably indie coffee shops, trying to expose your basic case of money laundering. Jake had been Alistair Beckett, a struggling playwright and amateur wine maker, and she’d been his girlfriend Bryn Acosta, poetess and lifestyle blogger. There are more, because Jake and Amy have perfected the ‘proposal-as-a-distraction’ technique by now, and because all Amy has to do is buy him a coffee in the morning to get either a confession of undying love or a fond joke at her expense depending on how early it is.   
  
"Captain Holt, I’m going to take that interview. And um, would you mind if I created… tiny disruption today?"  
  
"I would obviously rather you didn’t." Still, Amy and him have a connection, and the smile he gives her there is most certainly not a figment of her imagination.  

* * *

"Scully. Or Hitchcock. I don't know but since you are both entirely irrelevant to anything, I don't care. But you have a wife, right?" Scully (because it's him, not Hitchcock, that Gina's decided to wheel herself over to terrorise today) drops his sandwich immediately, assuming that she's here to steal his lunch.   
  
"Oh yeah. We've been married for 20 years now, we're really happy. Well, she doesn't talk much, she's always been a quiet one, but we love each other." The thought enters Gina's head, not for the first time, of whether Scully's wife is actually a blow up doll he found on the street. Can blow up dolls have children? She's got to google that as soon as she gets to her desk.  
  
"Tell me, when you asked her to marry you, was her reaction abject horror followed by Stockholm Syndrome, or was she kind of resigned to a life with you?"   
  
"She proposed to me! It was beautiful, she left the ring in my jacket pocket with a note that just said 'question mark'! Real movie moment when I said yes." Her eyes widen at this, although there is even more evidence for Scully's wife being a blow up doll now. Animate or not, someone proposed to Scully. The thought makes her stomach roll over, and she looks over at where Boyle is on his second hour of preparing an elaborate 'work friendly' consommé gel and a marrow sorbet. He's been trying to get them to move in together for some time; she'd found his food dehydrator between her bulk bought  _easymac_  and  _uncrustables_. And she guesses they've been "dating" for almost two years, but also, they haven't, and if you ask her they got together four months ago for the first time because, no matter how frequent, a drunken hook up does not count as bearing any romantic intent. And yes, she'd agreed to go on a date with him but only because he'd scored a reservation for Jay-Z and Beyonce's favourite New York restaurant. She likes him, she can't even be bothered to deny that anymore.

"Why'd you ask?" She'd forgotten that she was still talking to Scully through all of that, and rather than give him an appropriate answer she crinkles her nose in disdain, fishes his sandwich from where he's dropped it on his keyboard, and rolls away again. Boyle comes up to her, that dumb bounce in his step undiminished despite her best efforts. 

"So, what's up. Have you...thought about that thing I asked you this morning?" 

"Whether I think that Jake and Amy are gonna have a Taylor Swift song as their first dance? Because I'm not sure, but I do know that Amy's going to walk down the aisle to Shower, by Becky G. Jake lost a bet last year ago, so it has to happen."

"No, I'm talking about us moving in together. Look, I promise I won't get rid of any of your terrifying wolf memorabilia, or even your shrine to Chris Evans' torso. I just think it's time. I l-" Throughout this, Gina's rolling further and further away, until she looks at him from the Captain's doorway, phone in hand and an excuse on her tongue.

"Oh look, I just got to Liquorice Mountain of Kwazy Cupcakes. We'll talk later. Bye." She rolls against the wall and stays there until Charles' given up, and then a little while after that because the Captain gets a call and, no thanks.

She's scared about him going in way too fast way too hard, and she knows that her affinity for shiny things will mean that she won't say no if he proposes. And maybe, she's okay with that.

"Ugh, I cannot believe I was just briefly considering marrying Boyle." She announces to herself, but it doesn't ring quite true, not even to her. It sounds more like a weak attempt at self consolation than anything. Gross. 

* * *

 

They're parked in the garage of a warehouse, and everything feels like it did two years ago. Jake's even taken out his enormous white suit and insisted to wear it on the stake out, and Rosa is bearing a small braid in her hair courtesy of Cagney and Lacey, who Jake had decided to stop and see on the way to the stake out.  
  
"I've talked to Bill the hairdresser, and he's told me he's been asked to come here to give an unnamed client a 'dope fade.' Oh Pontiac Bandit, I've got you now."   
  
"You better."  
  
"That reaction is unsurprisingly far less gratifying then Amy's when I practice it in front of her. D'you think you could add in some kind of gasp of approval, pull me into bed because of how impressed you are-" Rosa's face is unmoving as a statue. "No? No that's okay. I get it." The thought crosses through Jake's mind that Rosa would make a perfect addition to Mt. Rushmore, although she would terrify the groups of Japanese tourists.   
  
"QUICK, Doug Judy: two o'clock. What's our plan, Jake?" 

  
"I will admit I did not think we'd get this far, but I guess we just call it and get in there. He hasn't seen us, has he?" Rosa shakes her head, but she's already barking commands down walkie talkie and instructing their relief team to follow their lead. And then they're running in, guns up and his vest fitting terribly over his white suit, and Doug Judy is pulling a gun on them. It happens fast enough that the details escape him, but what he does see happens in slow motion; Rosa kicking the gun out of Doug Judy's hands, the relief team surrounding them, Doug Judy being pinned to the ground and his voice, comically deep and slowed down: "I've got you now....pontiac bandit..." And god damn it if it isn't cool to hear it and know it's happening. 

* * *

"I have a suggestion for you." They're in Babylon, and Gina's looking at Boyle as if to dare him to interrupt her. As if he ever would.

"See at first, when I thought about you I'd puke a little in my mouth? I thrive on disgusting stuff- that's why I work at a police station, but I could  _not_ deal with that" Now, Boyle knows that it's futile to try and interject, but he's quietly trying to train his face into something that resembles 'respectul listening' rather than 'genuinely hurt but trying to power through because your bone bro/girlfriend is terrifying to a certain extent.' He is unsure about how successful he is in that respect, but he can't help but be comforted by the fact that he tried. 

"I don't think that anymore, is what I'm trying to say. You make me feel...smiley face with rosy cheeks, but if you tell anyone, I will make sure that every dish you eat till you retire is always just a touch too salty. Even desserts." He gasps at that one, because he can't help it; she looks so serious when she threatens him, and to have his food always be too salty might as well be a fate worse than death. Her eyes are boring into him with a fervour Rosa's could never match, and the fact remains that there is something oddly erotic about the recoiling of his stomach when she's scary. 

"I told Jake that we were doin' it because he walked in on us, but the truth is, I was thinking about telling him anyway. You're his best friend, I'm like, his sister, and it makes  _sense_. So what I'm trying to say is-"

During this point of her spiel, he gets a text, and the 'Bloop' sound that echoes across the secret bathroom shakes them both forcibly out of the strange trance they're falling into. In that moment, she shakes her head, and seems to rethink everything she was going to say. 

"No! Finish what you were saying! Gina I promise, whatever you want to happen between us is what will happen, but you gotta give me some leeway here! I've never had to woo someone so complex! You're like...the umami of people. One day your salty, the next bitter, the next s-"

"Enough! I was going to say, if you care so much, that I'm okay with dating you now.  **Don't**  get ahead of yourself though. We are just two people, going to dinner, having sex, not thinking about moving in together yet."

"You said yet! That implies possibility!"  She sighs.

"Ugh. I regret this decision immediately!" She almost sings this as she walks out, and adds, as an afterthought: "I have a gig with Floorgasm next Tuesday." There's an expectation tacked onto that, and he leaves Babylon with a bounce in his step that everyone in the precinct will recognise and make fun of. (Everyone, in this case, being Jake.) It's worth it. 

* * *

 

"Did you get him?" Amy leans over from her desk when he walks in, and seeing his triumphant nod and wide smile, allows herself a small victory celebration. 

"How about you? That whole job interview thing, how'd it go?" 

"Oh yeah, it was fine. I really think I might get it. That'd be okay, right?"

"Are you kidding me? That's so cool. I mean, I'll miss you and junk, but you've wanted this for years! Of course you should go for it if they offer it to you. Which like, I'm sure they will. I didn't write you a letter of recommendation this time, so that has to roll in your favour."

"That was probably a good idea, yeah. Hey, look at us. It's all happening." She looks at him then, at the tie she'd done for him this morning and his face lit up with the joy of catching Doug Judy, and she can't help but feel like maybe the Captain was on to something when he asked about them getting married. It makes sense, is all, considering where they are in life and where they seem to going. And her mom's been calling her non-stop for the last three months asking whether the question'd been popped. And she knows why it hasn't: it's the same reason why even though Jake told her about how he wanted "romantic stylez", he waited for her to ask him out before actually doing anything about it. 

"Yeah...all happening. Hey, tonight, we'll go to dinner. Celebrate you, celebrate me, and celebrate how my accountant called yesterday and told me my debt was now 'perfectly manageable and could be repaid within the next five years. Wear something loose, it's a fixed price buffet and I really want to make it count." With that he's off, chasing after Rosa and Doug Judy, who she's leading to the interrogation room. He seems to have delved into reciting Neruda at her. Suffice to say she does not look mollified in the least, and Jake jumps in to save her from the inevitable police brutality complaints they seem to be headed towards.

So now he's got Doug Judy in the interrogation room, handcuffed and looking sheepish, and there's a confession lying between them. This is Jake's finest moment, he's sure of it. 10 years of work and there he is, trying to freak him out via movie refs and West Coast hip hop. (All the  _more_  aggravating, because every time he guesses what he's quoting he feels like he's let down the city.)

"First of all, nobody even knows the verse to Pumps and a Bump, so that's dumb for you to use against me, and second of all our friendship?" He gestures between them wildly, "it's over."   
  
"You know man, that stings. I really think we could be real friends. Like, tell me about your problems and all that shit."

"I have no problems, and if I did, I have a best friend to tell them to."

"How's your deal with that girl going?"

"Girl? What girl? We never talked about a girl..."

"I heard you was fired and then turned up in the mafia, and I had to check it out. My buddy Freddie Ianucci turned up in Barbados and told me all about it. Man, you are the lamest criminal ever. Apparently all you did was get drunk and complain about some chick. How's it going on that front?"

"Yeah well, we've been super doing it for a year. Bought an apartment together and everything, I make dinner every night and we're working through The Wire right now. You know it's on Netflix? Great show." Doug Judy makes a noise of assent at that.

"Nice, nice, you're hitting that domestic stylez then? I respect that. I'm sure you guys make a beautiful couple." The escort comes in to take him to the holding cell, and Jake sees what he's been dreaming about (on and off, because there have been some other unsolvable cases along the way, and Amy) for ten years.

"You'd be a cool dude if you weren't an actual criminal, you know." He adds as Judy's being led out, and punctuates it with a Miley-Cyrus-Told-You-So face.   
  
"Yeah well, you'd be a cool dude if you weren't an actual cop. Tell Diaz to come visit me in jail, yeah?"  
  
"She never will!" Doug Judy laughs at that, and he sounds way too happy for someone about to go to jail. Still, Jakes not one to ignore a victory where he can, so he ignores it. 

* * *

Amy's been seriously underestimating how much work Jake puts into his dumb gestures. She's been trying to rent confetti cannons all morning to no avail, and she'd have to admit that her interview for the Captain place was way less stressful then trying to make sure everything's in place before Jake comes back from the interrogation room where he's triumphantly dragged Doug Judy. 

There was a...small altercation when it came to making sure Scully understood the cue for when to play Kool and the Gang's "Celebration", which had involved her frantically threatening him with pouring boiling hot Oolong and Cinnamon Chai Blend (With sea foam, apparently) over his STUPID head. But all of that aside, she's there, and she's ready. There are ten perps she arrested for soliciting as their second offence waiting at the door in the hands of the very capable Detective Cho, and right now she's mostly playing a game of how fast can one's heartbeat get without resulting in immediate death. It's working out okay, but a lot can change in a single moment. 

And then he's there. And his smile is brighter than the unforgiving precinct lighting (there had been a few weeks where Gina had made some headway on her petition to change it to a more rose toned lighting because apparently it was better for her skin tone but that had been swiftly lifted when she'd forgotten to pass along a message from the Deputy Commissioner because she'd been to busy taking selfies). Anyway, his smile is brighter than that, and his walk is accompanied with what Amy hesitates to call a dance and prefers to refer to as "a half-shimmy." 

"Amy Santiago I have done it! I've secured the Pontiac Bandit's place behind bars for at least five to eight years, but maybe less time depending on how good a lawyer he can get before next week.- God that would've felt so much better without the last part, d'you know, I think I'm going to start from the to-" 

"Yeah well! I got the Captain's post! And you know what else, I ran a prostitution ring and arrested sixteen guys for soliciting. I know it's not a felony, but it is if it's your second offense, which it was for ten of these gentlemen. Bring in the Johns!" She says this all in one breath, desperate to get it out, which admittedly ruins the effect a little, but still. He gets it, the moment of realisation just inching across his face with every word she says. 

When Scully (too late, of course) hits play on the speakers and "Celebration" blares through the precinct, they both know. She slides down on one knee towards where he's standing among the confetti shower (which works out much better than expected, and she only makes a minor grimace at the burn as she slides), and says it.

"Jake Peralta. You have made me the happiest woman in the whole world. I spent one whole dollar on this ring. Will you marry me? You don't have to say yes, but-" And he's pulling her up and kissing her before she can finish, and then, after god knows how long, he puts on his best impression of her grumpy face and says yes in the most reluctant manner he can muster. Which is not particularly reluctant, to be perfectly honest, but nobody's really checking.

And then she kisses him again, because why the hell shouldn't she.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a product of my endless frustration with the general lack of fic in this fandom. Basically, I wrote proposal!fic, because no one did it for me the way I wanted. Also, this is my first fic ever, but you don't care. 
> 
> Special thanks go to Molly for the cheerleading and the putting up with my long and terribly punctuated rambles on the subject of these two dweebs.


End file.
